A nestful of stories

Like a driver who is eager to get home, changing lanes as he weaves through traffic, so do the stories in this collection of 14 short stories move the reader from one literary lane to another all in a bid to get them home safe while beating traffic.

The Weaverbird Collection is a fitting title as the weaverbirds are known to be gregarious and raucous. It is believed that African weaverbirds build the most elaborate of nests.

The authors in this collection contribute their own brand of material to building an elaborate nest. ‘How Sergeant Tom Redwood Lost His Penis' is Ike Okonta's disturbing account of what goes down in the Niger Delta region. The story is narrated by a disgraced white ex-soldier who is employed by the Nigerian government as a mercenary and is given free rein to help ‘keep the peace' as he deems fit.

Khalidah Aderonke Bello's ‘Hair memories' is a wholly believable childhood account of her recollections as a young girl with kinky African hair troubles while growing up in the white man's land. With a generous sprinkling of the Yoruba language, Bello reveals the awkward love-hate relationship many African women - and by extension their men - have with anti-brush tresses.

Uche Peter Umez delves into the sub-culture of homosexuality in Nigeria in a ‘Night so Damp'; while Unoma Azuah and Tade Ipadeola take readers into the unseen as they go back and forth between the world of the living and the dead. While touching on the romantic, Ipadeola's reminiscence on the now ancient habit of gathering under the moonlight to listen to fables, takes a different turn in ‘The Bowmaker's Dream'.

E.C. Osondu, the 2009 Caine prize winner, takes readers through the sights and smells of a ghetto in Lagos, giving an account of a child's first impression of a jobless white man, Mark, and his lifestyle in ‘Our first American.'

The last paragraph in the story reads thus: "As for Mark, he actually married the actress and took her to America, but we heard they got divorced after a few months. Mark came back. People on the street said they were not surprised. Any white man that eats pepper must return to Lagos."

Ayodele Arigbadu's ‘Lots of Muscle and Lots of Blood' is a passion-filled account of the "certainly not as boring a life as we imagine" existence of a young couple whose "blood still boiled with passion." The very-much-in-love couple had developed a daily routine which they kept faithfully, and all went well, until a visit from the husband's loving mother three months into the marriage. Arigbabu reminds us in this story that no one can really predict the direction of a man's thoughts, or the action that will follow.

The first story in the ‘Weaverbird Collection,' Mogbolahan Koya-Oyagbola's ‘Seafood Pasta' is not just about food, although the mouth-watering descriptions proffered in the protagonist's narrative are capable of offsetting hunger pangs in the reader. Sam, the protagonist, leaves Nigeria in search of an education. Becoming a chef to survive is the least of the idealistic Sam's troubles in the foreign land. He is, however, determined not to become a ‘galump'. ‘Seafood Pasta' stirs up all kinds of stomach-churning emotions.

The rather plain cover jacket of Weaverbird Collection is a plain reminder that no book should be judged by its cover. The bird's nest, which is shaped like the Nigerian map is innovative, yet reminds one of the billboards by a popular food company, where the Nigerian map is a plate of noodles. While ‘Weaverbird' is embossed in an effort to make the cover image stand out, the fact that no additional effort is made to make the ‘map-shaped nest' distinct, seems to defeat the purpose.

The book's four editors: Akin Adesokan, Ike Anya, Sarah Ladipo Manyika and Ike Oguine did a remarkable work editing the ‘Weaverbird Collection' which records negligible errors.

They also get it right with the blurb, which says, "This collection suggests that new Nigerian writing is as engaged with the political as it is with the personal, and is certainly not obsessed with ‘debauchery'... The new writing therefore defies easy categorisation."

The stories in this collection are a riveting mix, and the reader is wont to come away with one or two favourites.